


The Wedding Diaries

by PutItBriefly



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:49:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PutItBriefly/pseuds/PutItBriefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So, now that I am embarking on the most stressful thing I have done since graduation, it has been ...suggested to me that a good way to relieve stress would be to tell untold numbers of complete strangers on the internet all of my personal business.</p><p>"And I said, 'That's perfect!'</p><p>"Who am I?  My name is Lizzie Bennet, and I'm getting married."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Episode One: Introduction

"Greetings, internet!  Who am I?  I’m the 27-year-old CEO of Longbourn Media, a web video-based production firm, now appearing in her very own vlog!!  SHOCKING, am I right?  Not so much.  I've actually done this before!  Once upon a time, as a financially struggling grad student, I did my thesis project on the growing relevancy of new media.  Via a video blog, hosted right here on YouTube.  It...it was honestly a much bigger success than me or anyone I knew thought it could have been.  It brought me a lot of professional success and important relationships and honestly, I am a better, more fulfilled person for it.

 "That blog is filled with regret and shame.

 "But, whenever I, or really, anyone I knew, had a problem, we would talk about it on my blog.  Talking, or VENTING, I guess, always helps you feel better and solutions have a funny way of presenting themselves if you just keep... on... _talking_.    

 "So, now that I am embarking on the most stressful thing I have done since graduation, it has been ...suggested to me that a good way to relieve stress would be to tell untold numbers of complete strangers on the internet all of my personal business.

 "And I said, 'That's perfect!'

 "Who am I?  My name is Lizzie Bennet, and I'm getting married."

  **Episode One: Introduction**

 "Because this is the same YouTube account I used last time, if you want to watch the whole dramatic story unfold, all you need to do is take a gander at the playlist to your right.  I...don't really recommend it?  There is a lot on that playlist that I am deeply embarrassed by, which for internet strangers is... probably a selling point.

 "Just remember that I made those videos when I was younger!  And despite having absolutely no experience in the world, I was pretty confident that I knew ...everything.  Which is normal for 20-somethings, but most people don't _blog_ about for a year.

 "Well...actually...blogging is one of the more self-congratulatory past times the internet has blessed us with, so most 20-somethings probably do.

 "BUT MINE WAS A VIDEO BLOG!

 "If you are joining us for the first time, or simply chose to ignore that playlist because you are here for DRESSES and CAKES and MEN IN TUXEDOES!!  Welcome.

 "Little bit of background: My mother has been obsessed with me getting married for my _entire life_.  Right now, she is torn between annoyance that it took me 27 years to agree to walk down the aisle and rapturous joy that I am Walking.  Down. The Aisle.  She completely hates my fiancé, but is crazy enough that she doesn't let a little thing like her daughter marrying a guy she cannot stand stand in the way of her moment of triumph.

 "I enjoy the fact that she hates him way too much.  Be warned.

 "And just who is this mystery man?  Well.  The playlist to the right can explain him far better than I ever can.  Though..most of it...is in the form of me doing unflattering impressions...of him...

 "He loves me anyway."


	2. Episode Two: Fiance

"It's really weird to have this project entirely to myself.  I'm used to creative endeavors being the work of a group, trying to make many perspectives combine to bring a single, overarching vision to life.  It's usually my vision, but I'm definitely used to having more hands in the pot.

"Is that a saying?

 "My original vlog started out as a joint effort between me and my best friend Charlotte Lu.  I was studying Mass Communications, she was studying TV production and we got to live out our passions for the different sides of the camera.  There was conflict and drama and her role in my video diaries shrank as she started spending more time on projects that spoke to _her_ , but in a way, the project always belonged to both of us.

 "These videos, filmed and edited by yours truly, are about my wedding!  And I'm the bride!  So you'd think I'd be all Bridezilla and IT'S ALL ABOUT ME, but it's not.  At all.  Because a wedding is about two people.  It's a joint venture.  It's still about taking more than one perspective and ending up with a single voice.

 "These videos are just me and it is so weird.  I have not been a 'just me' in a long time.

 "My name is Lizzie Bennet, and this is my fiancé."

  **Episode Two: Fiancé**

 "How do I begin to explain William Darcy?  Well...the playlist on the right...will show you how I explained him when we first met.  I'm not proud of those videos.  It's important to me that I say that every single time they come up.  And normally, I don't bring them up.  But somehow..knowing that they are right there...

 "Anyway.

 "William and I met at a wedding.  This was...um, about three years ago.  We made really bad first impressions on each other, and I was _committed_ to hating him.  Because I thought I knew everything and could totally get the measure of a person after eavesdropping on _one conversation_.

 "But the thing is, William holds a grudge like no one I have ever met before in my life.  If you piss him off, you will never, EVER unpiss him.  So it's a good thing that it is really, really, REALLY hard to piss him off.  Seriously, _everything_ rolls right off his back.  So, if you make a lousy first impression on him...that doesn't really matter.  He doesn't base the way he sees you on that.  He will still look for your good qualities.

 "And he'll find them, even when they are buried under miles of bitterness and hostility.

 "Everyone who knows him well loves him.  (Hint: My mother doesn't know him at all.)  People are always going to be drawn to someone who looks at them and sees nothing but their absolute best.  

 "But, he's kind of a hard guy to get to know.  He's shy, and he can be..caustic, when he's uncomfortable.  Hence the lousy first impression.  But he grows on you.  

 "He's a fungus.

 "Which now that I have said that, I realize it sounds insulting.  He's a good fungus.  A delicious shitake mushroom.  

 "William is the CEO of a little company you may have heard of called Pemberley Digital.  Take a look at your phone.  I guarantee you have at least two Pemberley apps on it right now.  His great-grandfather came to the United States from England in like the 1920’s with dreams of opening a movie studio that would rival Hollywood.  By the 1990’s, William’s father had realized that the future of mass communication and storytelling was digital and he moved Pemberley towards web-based production.  Enter William, who’s a programmer at heart, and he moved the whole company towards app design and revolutionizing the way we use digital devices to communicate.  Pemberley tells stories in the most broad sense -- a lot of scripted programming comes out of their studios, but they also figure out how to offer everyone a chance to share their stories and make their voices heard.

 "Pemberley Digital is an absolutely amazing place and I would be lying if I said that I didn't fall in love with him at least a little because of his company.  

 "What can I say?  My turn-ons include changing the culture and creative fulfillment.

 "And I'm gonna..end this video now before I start talking about our sex life to the internet."

 


	3. Episode Three: Bridesmaids

"In my first two videos, we started discussing the wedding personnel.  The bride.  The groom.  The bride's crazy mother who considers her daughter's marriage to be some kind of personal triumph.  One person we didn't talk about was the bride's equally-crazy-but-in-totally-different-way father, who gave William "permission" to marry me, and then turned around and tried to talk ME out of it for all of five minutes before changing his mind...  I'm still not sure what was up with that?  We've been together for two years.  I think it is pretty well established that we like each other?  I don't know, maybe we're subtle.

 "Spoiler Alert if you want to watch the playlist to the right, but haven't gotten around to it yet: WE ARE NOT SUBTLE.  AT ALL.

 "But we _are_ really awkward...and _terrible_ at explaining ourselves.

 "But anyway.  My name is Lizzie Bennet, and that's not what this video is about!"

**Episode Three: Bridesmaids**

 "I have selected four bridesmaids to do my bidding and tell me how pretty I am.  

 "Picking my maid of honor was the first hardest choice of the wedding planning.  Picking a maid of honor is like saying, 'I have singled out this one woman as the most important and trustworthy of my peer group.'  Which, you know, I have multiple important and trustworthy women in my life and elevating one above the others is kind of a crappy thing to do.  Especially when you have more than one sister.  Because when you have sisters that are the around the same age as you, the expectation is that one of them will be the maid of honor.

 "Choosing between sisters is like choosing between -- I LIE, Jane wins.

 "But, um, things are just more complicated than that.

 "Obviously, Jane and Lydia are bridesmaids.  And so is William's sister Gigi, who was like a sister to me before I ever starting dating her brother.  And so is Charlotte, who was like a sister to me before I was ever born.

 "There's a lot of politics involved in the selection of a maid of honor, with the primary question being, "Will anyone else pick her?"  Because if someone else will pick one of your candidates, but not the other, you have to go with the other.

 "Charlotte has a younger sister, Maria, and neither of them are engaged, but I feel pretty confidant that when the time comes, they'll both pick each other.  So I can not-pick Charlotte and be pretty okay.

 "Last fall, when our cousin Mary got married -- and yes, Mom just loved a cousin getting married before any of her daughters -- Lydia was her maid of honor.  So I can not-pick Lydia, because she's done it before.

 "Which leaves us with JANE VERSUS GIGI!!"

 "Now, under normal circumstances, I don't think bride's sister versus groom's sister is a fair fight.  But Gigi played a really big and pushy role in getting William and me together in the first place, and that tipped the scales in her favor.  She doesn't have any sisters or cousins and her social circle overlaps with her brother's almost one hundred percent.  So someone else asking Gigi?  Unlikely.

"In the other corner, we have Jane.  Jane is..Jane is Jane.  She's my older sister and the only person in my life who has been there for me longer than Charlotte, and she only gets that distinction because she is older than Charlotte.

 "So it comes down to Gigi's relevance in the relationship in question plus the guilt-factor of no one else picking her versus Jane's Janeness.

 "And as much as I feel lousy about it, I cannot fight Jane's Janeness.  Jane is one of the most amazing and kind and sweet and thoughtful people in the entire world and I feel like everyone would want her standing with them when they take the biggest step of their life.

 "But, I'm glad I got her first." 

 


	4. Episode Four: The Problem with Groomsmen

"We as a society tend to like to categorize people.  We understand things better when they can be placed in boxes.

 "You have your math and science people (William), and you have your reading and social studies people (me).  Which is not to say that he doesn't read -- because he does, or that I don't understand science -- because I do.  But if you have a math question, don't bring it to me.  I would rather talk about literature analysis.  Or how the accessibility of new media leads to cultural change.  If you need to talk numbers, I could point you to William or Charlotte.  This entire video is somehow just a bunch of 1's and 0's and he understands that.  Or the page views and the analytics and the charts and graphs for viewership and that is all Charlotte.

 "But this math problem...this one I got.  My name is Lizzie Bennet, and four is not equal to two."

  **Episode Four: The Problem with Groomsmen**

 "Last time, we talked about my bridesmaids, all of whom I love dearly and will be my minions in lesser-attractive dresses.  There are four of them.  

 "Allow me to pose this question:

 "Does William Darcy have four close male friends?  Guys that it would be completely appropriate for him to ask to stand next to him at his wedding?

 "No.  No, he does not.

 "Which...hey, it is the quality of the relationship that people have, not the number of relationships.  William and his friends do crazy stuff for each other!  There is devotion there.

 "But he only has two really-close-wedding-party appropriate friends.

 "In this corner, we have the Best Friend, Bing Lee.  Chums since their days at Harvard, where presumably they sat in leather chairs, smoking pipes in dinner jackets instead of going to class.

 "In this corner, we have Fitz Williams, the friend who actually-lives-in-the-same-town-as-you and you-hang-out-with-every-single-day friend.

 "But there's not really anyone else on a Fitz or Bing level.

 "We have a couple ways to tackle this problem:

 "Solution Number One: Don't worry about the numbers.  Depending on how you handle the procession, you don't necessarily need equal numbers of bridesmaids and groomsmen.  The bridesmaids can walk themselves down the aisle, while the groomsmen wait at the alter with the groom the entire time.  The photos will look unbalanced but, you have to ask yourself: In the grand scheme of things, how bad a problem is that?

 "Solution Number Two: Why determine the role someone plays at the wedding using only gender as a qualifier?  If we move Gigi off my side to her BROTHER's side, then perfect symmetry is achieved.  Major downside: William and I both come from really traditional families.  And while I personally have NO PROBLEM with riling my family up, William's a lot more hesitant to do things that he knows will make his family uncomfortable.  And, if we're being honest, just the fact that we're together has made a lot of his family members uncomfortable.  You've got to pick your battles, and that one might not be worth fighting.

 "Solution Number Three: Just pick someone!  Even though William is not AS CLOSE TO other people as he is to Bing and Fitz doesn't mean he doesn't KNOW anyone else, or even that he isn't close-ish with other people.  We hang out with Fitz's boyfriend Brandon just as much as we hang out with Fitz.  The friendship's not as close and probably wouldn't sustain itself without Fitz around as a common bond, but Brandon's still a constant in our lives and involved in every wacky hijink that Fitz is.  The problem with this solution is, out of all of William's other acquaintances, how does he single out the much needed fourth guy?  A work friend?  A college buddy?  Bing's older sister's husband's gambling addiction? 

 "Uh, not Caroline's...Louisa's.  Bing has two sisters, betcha didn't know that.

 "'Why William let Louisa marry a guy with a gambling addiction' is a topic for another video.  He tried to break them up.  Oh, how he tried."

 


	5. Episode Five: His Budget + My Mother

"To those of you who replied to my last video to say that it's not William's place to try to break up Louisa and her husband back when they were Louisa and her boyfriend, you are right.  No one is arguing with you.  

"William has boundary issues.

 "In that, he has _no idea_ where they are supposed to be.  He is either inappropriately involved with other people's lives or inappropriately weird and distant.  And then when you add that to just how shy he is, he never manages to learn where the line is because he's too nervous to try.  And when he's nervous he just...ugh..the less said the better.

 "So.  As you can imagine, the fact that he STILL has not won over my mother means he is uncomfortable around her one hundred percent of the time.  Which means he is not ANYWHERE CLOSE to winning her over, because a nervous William is not a William that knows how to not insult people.

 "So, yes, even though he's rich and I'm marrying him, thus fulfilling the life plan she laid out at my birth, Mom's not happy.

 "My name is Lizzie Bennet, and I'm not getting married to make my mother happy."

  **Episode Five: His Budget + My Mother**

 "I'm not...comfortable calling my mother a gold-digger, but she basically wants her daughters to be?  I mean, my sisters and I have been groomed our whole lives to be on the hunt for rich, single men to marry.  The idea that we might have other things to think about -- careers, ambitions, hobbies, getting a good education -- to my mother, it was all a shocking and tragic lack of priorities.

 “But here I am, despite all my reading and studying when I could have been husband-hunting, planning a wedding.  

 “William and I have decided that we want to keep things simple.  William likes simple and William likes orderly.  I’m..all about the drama, but I think we can count on a wedding be chock full of drama all on its own, so for the sake of reigning in the chaos as much as we possibly can, we are going for simple.  Simple is that much easier to keep orderly.  Order is our best defense against the on-coming chaos.

“My mother hears ‘simple‘ and she thinks ‘cheap.‘  My mother thinks ‘cheap’ and she reminds me of Pemberley Digital’s annual projections and the executive pay scale, all of which is published for the benefit of the stock-holders.

“And then it’s destination weddings!  Releasing endangered birds to fly over us as we leave the church!  But why get married in a church?  Surely, there are cathedrals we could rent out for a month.  Apparently, I should hire Alexander McQueen to personally design and hand-sew my wedding dress, regardless of the fact that he’s dead.  All flowers in my bouquet should come from the rain forest.  The reception must be catered by a chef whose restaurant has earned four Michelin stars.  I can only assume that has nothing to do with tires?  Or maybe it does?  Maybe the automotive industry is really invested in quality eating establishments?

“We will not be doing any of that.  No destinations.  No birds.  No zombie-dress.  The reception will be catered, okay, but we’ll get someone local.

“William and I are not ostentatious people.  Just because he can afford some crazy over-the-top status-mongering, rain-forest killing hoopla doesn’t mean that we should have one!  Or that anyone should!  

“Some of these suggestions are probably illegal.

“A wedding is a event to celebrate two people joining their lives together.  This is our story, this is the time to share our voices -- joined together into one unified perspective.  Yes, William and I will always be individuals, but we’re individuals who intend to support and stand by and love each other for the rest of our lives.

“And we want to keep things simple.  That’s who we are.  That’s our voice.”  

 


End file.
